Smaller defense budgets put National Guard on firing line

SIG CHRISTENSON | San Antonio Express-News

Published 7:01 pm, Saturday, March 2, 2013

Photo: Bob Owen

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In this Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013, file photo, members of the 449th Aviation Support Battalion of the Army National Guard participate in a mobilization ceremony at the Army Aviation Support Facility in Austin, Texas in advance of the unit's deployment to Kuwait. (AP Photo/San Antonio Express-News, Bob Owen) less

In this Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013, file photo, members of the 449th Aviation Support Battalion of the Army National Guard participate in a mobilization ceremony at the Army Aviation Support Facility in Austin, ... more

Photo: Bob Owen

Smaller defense budgets put National Guard on firing line

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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The entire family drove from San Antonio to Austin to bid farewell to Sgt. 1st Class Mario Orta as he readied to leave Texas for Kuwait.

Flanked by UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, Orta's wife, three children, mother and grandmother sat on metal risers with hundreds of others in a hangar as prayers were said and patriotic songs played.

"I get real sad," Maria Orta said of her son. "He's a part of me."

Tearful goodbyes at ceremonies like these have become a ritual of war for American troops and their families since 9/11. But the 500-plus soldiers and families who converged on Austin-Bergstrom International Airport to salute the 449th Aviation Support Battalion were part of an event that is going to become increasingly rare.

Shrinking defense budgets, the looming sequester and the troop drawdown in Afghanistan will transform active-duty and reserve component forces. What comes next isn't clear, but some in the National Guard fear a return to an era when it had inferior equipment and few opportunities to prove its worth to the Pentagon.

"They value us, but money's going to get tight and what we've seen in the past is when the active gets cut, the guard gets cut, and when there's limited resources they'll go to the active-duty first and the guard second," explained the Texas Guard's adjutant general, Maj. Gen. John Nichols, a member of the Air National Guard since 1992.

"The last time we had a drawdown, relations between the Army and the Army National Guard were quite contentious," said John Goheen, a spokesman for the National Guard Association of the United States. "When resources become constrained, the battles for resources get tough."

A strategic reserve during the Cold War, the guard emerged as an operational force after 9/11. Nichols said the Pentagon is crafting plans to send the guard to places like South Korea once every five years or have part-time troops ready for national disasters.

In the last decade, Texas Guard, the nation's largest at 22,710 troops, has been an A-team player. It has sent 32,127 soldiers and airmen overseas, and in that time, 16 soldiers have died in combat. The last killed was Staff Sgt. Nelson David Trent, 37, of Round Rock, who died in December in a roadside bombing near Kandahar.

Today, a San Antonio-based medical evacuation company that flew mercy missions in Iraq in 2008 is in Afghanistan. D Company, 3-144th Infantry has 200 GIs pulling airfield security. The 136th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade's 189 soldiers handle logistics and communications for bases around Kabul.

But fewer guardsmen are at war. The number deployed in December, 16,383 soldiers, was 40 percent under three years ago. And where 3,000 Texans went on a single mission to Iraq in 2004, 1,298 soldiers in 14 units will deploy between now and next year, with one intelligence unit consisting of just six GIs.

"Deployments are going to be small, they're going to dwindle down," said Command Sgt. Maj. Jose Cazares, 53, of San Antonio. "And compared with the amount of deployments we've had in the past, it's getting to the point where for many of our soldiers it may be the first and last deployments of their career."

Retired Lt. Gen. Ted Stroup, the Army's deputy chief of staff from 1994-96, said leaders today have great appreciation for the guard's contributions. Nichols thinks that is true but has concerns, saying, "We don't want to go back to the way we were, a strategic reserve. The chief of staff says he does not want us to do that, either."

The battalion's 10-month deployment will start after Easter and see some of its soldiers work in Jordan and other countries in the region. Two San Antonio-based companies are part of the battalion and contain 89 of the unit's 307 soldiers.

GIs like Sgt. 1st Class Robert Aldrete, 56, of St. Hedwig and off on his third deployment, say they're ready to go.

"If the country needs me to go, I'm ready to go. I'm ready to rock. I mean, that's why I wear this uniform," he told the San Antonio Express-News (http://bit.ly/Y2SAHR).

Orta's wife, Janie, would like to get off the merry-go-round, saying, "It's so hard for him being away from home, being away from the family." Orta said troops he knows don't complain, but may not want to stand out. For his part, going to Kuwait is a point of immense pride.

"I know the guard's getting recognized," said Orta, 39, who was in Iraq from 2006-07. "We set a lot of standards back in '06-07, the Texas Army National Guard, and they were pretty much impressed, the active-duty, of how many things we got accomplished."